


Memory/Augury

by AetherAria



Series: Calamitous Intent [3]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: (in case that's not clear), (rated T because??? idk? panic attack and a lot of talk about death), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Alternative Universe - All Games Canon, Canon as Mythology, Descriptions of a Panic Attack, Gen, Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), Pre-Canon, Reincarnation, Sign Language, another ganondorf-meets-someone story from this verse, i really need to finish the Rhoam one so I can post it lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-07-15 00:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16051574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetherAria/pseuds/AetherAria
Summary: The princess has brought home a new knight. Ganondorf is... distressed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place a year or so after Closed Doors.

Gan was with Rhoam in the throne room, reading a report on a Moblin band making a nuisance of themselves up north when the boy was brought in. If they had used his name, Gan may have perhaps had some warning, some way to prepare himself, but instead the herald only announced the newest knight and then he was in the doorway, hand on hilt, and Gan heard but did not feel the parchment all fall from his hands and onto the floor.

He tried to stammer an apology - Rhoam had said something beside him that he had not been able to hear - but his voice did not catch, did not manage to say anything at all, merely escaped in a whoosh of air somewhere between a gasp and a sigh.

The boy (they had called him a knight? he had a sword, certainly, and a shield, but since when was this kingdom in the habit of conscripting children to fight for them?) was staring at him oddly, head tilted to the side with an expression of confused innocence that made him look even younger. He lifted his hands-

Gan flinched hard enough that he took a full step backward, and the boy hesitated, clearly alarmed, before he started signing in the air in front of him, making Gan feel unendingly foolish. He could almost feel Rhoam’s worried glances, but he couldn’t look at his friend. Not now. Instead he sank to his knees and started collecting the parchment he had dropped, his fingers still fumbling and his entire body feeling vaguely numb.

When he stood he could still feel the panic, like hands around his throat slowly squeezing tighter and tighter, but he managed to force his voice to work.

“I apologize, majesty,” he said, defaulting to honorifics as he typically did when someone else was around he and Rhoam. He kept his eyes on the parchment, not wanting to look at the boy again and unwilling to let Rhoam see whatever look was in his eyes right now.

“It is nothing of consequence,” Rhoam said, his voice taking on a tone of aggressive cheer. “Will you come meet our newest knight, my friend? I know you have a passing skill in Hylian sign, so you shall not need my interpretation terribly much, I believe.”

“No, majesty, I apologize again. I feel- quite suddenly unwell. I beg your pardon, but I should very much like to r-retire to my quarters.” He almost said retreat. Would that have been too militant a word? He wasn’t sure. Was in too much distress to be sure.

He wasn’t looking at Rhoam, but his voice was worried under the veneer of bold cheer. “Of course, friend. By all means, please take yourself to where you can rest. You can meet Link properly tomorrow.”

The invisible hand around Gan’s throat tightened suddenly, squeezing out his breath so that his next words came out in a rasp. “Of course, majesty,” he said, and then he bowed (Gerudo style, he wasn’t thinking and forgot to amend his bow to the Hylian way) and marched away without looking at either the King or his new knight again, passing his papers to a guard in the doorway so that he wouldn’t drop them again.

He made it back to his room somehow, in a haze of anxious circular thought, and when the door was safely closed behind him and he was surrounded by the accumulated comforts of his own life (rugs from home, a wood-carved wind chime from Rito village, the gloriously shiny and pristine bow Fikriya had sent him off with, stacks upon stacks of letters from his family, from his friends, from his acquaintances all across Hyrule), he pressed his hands flat against his bedspread and stared down at the fabric, breathing hard and not seeing what was before his eyes.

It was like a second pulse, the panic. Like another heart squeezing high in his chest and telling him to run and run and run if he was unwilling to fight. That boy- that boy-

It was worse than Zelda. It was far worse than the princess, because the princess made him wary, made him bury a hatred that was not his and smile through it on a near daily basis. Link-

It was a funny thing, to dream your own death over and over and over, and then meet the boy who had held the blade.

Who was still holding the blade.

Being in the same room with him- it was the same as being sure he was going to die. A promise of violence. And all the while this Link looked no more an adult than the princess, looked no more a fighter than a rabbit did, and this was Rhoam’s new knight? He held the sword-

His body spasmed with reactive terror at the thought- his own blood and pain and rage echoing out to him from the past, and Goddess be kind he did not want to die, did not want this oasis-eyed child to kill him with that blade, and did not want-

Gan’s heart was beating too fast, breathing coming too fast to match it, and he had never felt this close to death outside of his own dreams. It made no sense; he was safe. He was in his own room, touching his own damned bed, so why did he still feel those hands at his throat? Why did he still feel like he was dying, here and now? Like Link was an inevitability come to snuff him out and the reverberations of that future were killing him now, in the present?

 _Perhaps I_ am _dying_ , he thought, madly. _Perhaps this is the moment I feared as a child, the true Ganon finally destroying me and asserting his place. The goodness in me snuffed out, the me that I am, all that I_ _’ve worked for_ -

His hands were squeezing into fists against the rough wool of his blankets, and the pinpricks of pain where his nails dug into his palms were the only parts of his body that felt real, and not rushing with blood or vague and alien and numb to him, so he tried to focus on that while the beginnings of tears - tears, Goddess, what was wrong with him? - formed at the corners of his eyes.

“Nafoora,” he hissed, as if he could summon his sister’s teasing comfort with a word, and then he buried his face in his fisted hands and groaned, the sensation of inevitable death rushing over him like quicksand, fogging out rational thought entirely.

He wasn’t sure, when it was done, if it had only been moments or an hour in full that he had been overwhelmed, but once it all subsided he felt- empty, hollow, and shaking with strain and relief. He had fallen to his knees at some point, clutching his blankets and breathing hard into the fabric, but he did not remember doing so. He pulled himself back up and sat on his bed, shaken further by how weak he felt. How could he be this- this worn? It had only been his own mind, his own fear, and yet he felt more like he had spent a day striding through sand than part of an afternoon worried about some potentially dangerous child.

He ran a shaking hand down his face, rubbing away wet tracks he refused to acknowledge, and tried to think.

He couldn’t react like this every time he saw the child. And he knew he would be seeing him again- there was no possibility that Rhoam would let this go, and even if he wanted to, it wouldn’t make sense for Gan not to meet Link properly if they were both going to be existing in the King’s court. Today had been a disaster, doubtless, but if Rhoam believed his feigned illness he could at least salvage it. Hopefully.

The issue was that deep dread. He couldn’t know if it would happen again; that absolute feeling of doom when Link looked at him, and the animal instinct of self defense that came after. He did not want to die, and he felt on every level as if this boy would kill him- kill him _again_ , rather, and he wanted to fight it back.

That was what he really wanted to do, in the throne room.

He was sure Link would kill him, so he wanted to kill Link before he had the chance.

No- _wanted_ wasn’t the right word. It was another instinct, like those bitter feelings he had for the princess when he didn’t control them, like the anger he slowly controlled each night in meditation until it came softer and more reasonable. It was not _his_ feeling, this vengeful, lancing, overzealous urge to defend himself by attacking. It was not Gan.

It was Ganon.

Which meant, Gan thought, that he could learn to control it. Though his mind tried to shy from it, he made himself remember what Link had actually looked like. Oasis-eyed, he had thought before, and it had been apt. There was no hint of malice in the boy, and no hint of artifice either. He had been genuine, and genuinely confused by Gan’s reaction, and probably more than a little worried for him, if Gan’s read was correct.

Gan had spent a lifetime puzzling out which of his instincts were trustworthy and which were only leftover malice from a hundred defeated demons. Something in him was telling him that Link would hurt him, and he wasn’t actually sure if that feeling was memory, or augury, but there was something more important than whether Link would hurt him, and it was the fact that Gan did not want to hurt that child, not even to defend himself.

No. He did not want to, and he would not. Not this time. Not for anything.

Maybe this Link would kill him, maybe he would come and defeat him like every time before. Maybe that was still his destiny, even in this lifetime devoted to circumventing his nature. Maybe so. But Gan could still make a choice, even in that. He could choose not to fight back, when the time came. He could choose not to hurt an innocent, even when that innocent would hurt him.

His shaking breath evened out. His fisted hands loosened, and he stood, forcing his legs to support him through their strange exhaustion. It was always easier, he thought, when he simply made the choice, and stuck to it.

  


He still feigned illness for another solid day, just to make the excuse reasonable. If it had the added benefit of giving him extra time to steel himself against meeting the bright-eyed boy again, more the better.


	2. Chapter 2

The strangest part was, Gan found that he honestly enjoyed the company of the boy once they actually met, more so than most of Rhoam’s court.

He was inherently likable, Gan thought, and wondered if any of his past selves had been fond of the boy on some level as well. He did not have any memory that suggested it, but he still wondered.

When Rhoam had attempted the introduction for the second time, Gan had been able to control the vaguely nauseating feeling of doom and give the child a proper bow, and when he lifted himself back to vertical Link had signed his hope that Gan was feeling better this time, and he had been visibly delighted when Gan had responded without needing Rhoam to translate.

In fact, as far as Gan could tell they were two of the only persons in the court who knew Hylian sign besides Rhoam himself. Gan wasn’t exactly an expert, but it clearly endeared him to Link that he would communicate with him on his own terms, unlike the rest of the nobles who preferred to go right back to verbal speech the moment they learned that Link was mute, but not deaf. Gan wished that Link knew Gerudo sign, it would certainly make their conversations easier (Gan thought of his sister Aadil and embraced the pulse of homesickness it sent through him), but on the other hand Link likely wished that Gan was more proficient in his own dialect. With Link, Gan almost exclusively used sign, even though it made their conversations go slower, partially because it made Link so happy and partially because Gan knew it would help him to learn to communicate better in the long term.

It was hard not to worry about the sword, though. It was hard to focus on anything else while it was in the room, but the need to watch Link’s hands to see his meaning helped significantly to distract him. He didn’t think he would ever truly get _used_ to the sword, but he could at least learn ways to avoid thinking about it while it was still an issue.

He wasn’t surprised when he learned - from the horse’s mouth, so to speak - that Link was Zelda’s personal knight. He really should have seen it coming, but the screaming rush of death had muddied his brain a bit too much for him to make educated guesses on this particular point. Gan still thought the boy was too young, even once he had watched with the rest of the nobles as Link gave a demonstration of his skills with the legendary sword (terrifying, he could only hold himself in place because his legs felt turned to lead, a child shouldn’t be able to move like that and it filled his entire being with the certainty of death-), but Zelda was insistent that this boy was the only one who could protect her, and so here he was. Too young, but with skill enough and weapon in hand, and a title to hold while he stood between the princess and danger.

Maybe it was because he was much older than his two counterparts, but Gan felt- he felt a bit sick about the idea of Link fighting for Zelda’s life. Children should not be expected to lay down their lives, he thought, once he had distanced himself enough from his initial panic to look at the situation more objectively.

“Are you sure he can handle the strain of his position?” he asked Rhoam one day while they were alone, keeping his voice casual, breezy, as if this were merely a point of intellectual consideration and not the dire situation that it was- the life of a child held in trust.

“You have seen him fight as well as I,” Rhoam said. “Zelda hand-picked him. The _blade_ hand-picked him, and I can see why. He is a wonder with it, and the fact that he has it at all is enough of a wonder to earn him his place.”

“But-”

Gan hesitated, and Rhoam looked him over with worry, a look he had seen on the king’s face far too often since the first day he had met the champion and subsequently panicked and ran to his room like a child. This wasn’t _about_ Gan’s feelings, though, and he pushed his discomfort aside.

“But he’s only a child,” Gan said, trying to imbue those few small words the gravity he thought they deserved.

“Zelda knows best,” Rhoam said without even seeming to think about it, and Gan felt a flash of- not quite anger, he was familiar enough with that to recognize, but something a bit more like disappointment. “The boy is already a champion, and he’ll do better if we support him than if we tried to coddle him. He is not an infant.”

Gan’s brow furrowed, and he suppressed an edge of frustration that tried to bleed into his tone. “He is still a _child_ , Rhoam. Not old enough to inherit, not old enough to marry, and how can we justify asking him to take up arms for the kingdom? Especially when the kingdom is not even under threat.”

Gan half regretted saying that instantly, but it was too late to steer away. This was already a point of contention; Zelda insisted that danger was on the horizon, in her calm, sure, lacking-of-any-concrete-evidence sort of way, and her father believed her without reservation. Ganondorf was not so certain.

“When the threat comes, we need be prepared already. We cannot wait for- for disaster and _then_ rush to bolster our defenses.”

Something pulled behind Gan’s ribcage. “Cannot wait for- what were you going to say first, Rhoam?”

“Disaster,” Rhoam insisted, and Gan’s frown deepened.

“You were going to say Calamity,” he said coldly. “Were you not?”

Rhoam stared at him for a long, hard moment, before he sighed and put his hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry, my friend. My nerves are- she has been speaking so often of the Calamity, all the books and all the research on the ancient runes and temples, I think it has been getting to me. You know that I trust you. You are- you are my friend. Those are not just words to me.”

Gan felt guilty enough that he dropped his eyes. “I know that.”

“I understand,” Rhoam said. “I do. I understand why Link being knighted upsets you-”

“No, I don’t think that you do,” Gan said, riled back up to frustration in half a heartbeat. “It is not for my sake that I worry. It is for _his_. He is a child far from home, in a place where no one will speak with him in his own language and no one but us will actually listen when he speaks, and now he is being turned from what he is - a _child_ \- into some sort of preventative weapon to assuage the fears of a princess who is exactly as young and unqualified to make decisions for others as he is. Where are his parents? Is anyone looking after this boy?”

Gan was expecting some level of anger after this tirade, and he blinked when the expression that crossed Rhoam’s face looked vaguely pleased.

“I am happy that you have asked, friend,” the king said mildly, “because I was hoping that I could ask this service of you.”

“Me?” Gan said, and took an instinctive half step back away from his friend. “What? No. Certainly not. I’m in no such position. He needs looking after, and I-”

“Clearly care what happens to the boy. You are, once again, the only member of my court unafraid to speak to me so openly.” His face split into a pained sort of smile. “If any others have concerns about Link’s position, none have voiced them to me, nor to anyone who would bring them to me.”

“I cannot do this,” Gan said.

“Of course you can.”

“No,” Gan said, more adamantly, “I cannot.” His voice sank to a whisper, though they were the only ones in the room. “I cannot look at him without a vision of my own death rushing over me. How can you possibly trust this child’s safety to _me_ of all people?”

“You won’t hurt him,” Rhoam said. He sounded certain. So certain that it made Gan feel dirty, unworthy of that sort of trust.

“You can’t know that.”

“I know _you_. How often do we need to have this conversation, my friend? I trust you, and I will continue to trust you until I see the knife in my back myself.”

“Please don’t make light of-”

“Oh, let me laugh. I cannot laugh with my councilors, but please let me laugh with you, my friend.”

Gan opened his mouth to protest again, then sighed. “This isn’t some official proclamation,” he asked dourly, “is it?”

“Of course not. You know I trust my daughter’s judgment, but the both of them still require looking after, and I know you are not comfortable looking after Zel-”

“She would see through me in an instant.”

“Aye. But regardless, I think you can keep a more subtle eye on my newest knight, and at least make sure he isn’t throwing himself against dangers unnecessarily. You are a fierce warrior yourself, perhaps you could teach him a thing or tw-”

“No.” Gan’s throat had gone bone dry. “Absolutely not. No. You honestly expect that I should _spar_ with him? No. Not in a million years. No.”

“Right.” Rhoam shook his head, more as if clearing a thought than in denial. “I didn’t mean- I meant advice, Gan.” He laughed, the noise coming a bit hollow. “We want him in less danger, Gan, remember?”

Gan did not laugh in response. “I doubt the princess will be happy if I spend much more time with her new attendant.”

“She will be fine,” Rhoam said, dismissive. Gan disagreed, but said nothing. Rhoam rarely paid him any mind when he tried to discuss the less than lovely attitudes the princess on occasion revealed. “You do not need to _escort_ them, anyway. Just try to make sure the less than understanding court members do not forget his age, nor trample over him in his inability to speak up for himself in a way they can understand.”

That sounded almost reasonable. If it weren’t Link being discussed, Gan felt that he would have agreed right away. He sighed. “I cannot be the only buffer, Rhoam. I have other duties-”

“So you agree, then?”

Gan shot him an irritable look. Gan would be more apt to go along with Rhoam’s ideas if he did not so frequently get ahead of himself on whether Gan had yet agreed to them or not. “I have suggestions.”

Rhoam had the grace to look embarrassed, and he waved Gan ahead in the conversation.

“Bring in tutors in sign. I could do to learn more myself, to be a better- to be able to converse better with him. And if the nobles have some of the language under their belts as well, they would have no excuse to ignore him or misrepresent his wishes. Besides, since Hylian sign is derived from the Zora, it would help facilitate better relations with their kingdom as well.”

Rhoam’s expression took on that familiar tilt that meant he was yet again upset with himself for not having thought of so obvious a course of action himself. He nodded, and Gan knew he was restraining himself from bursting into a flurry of action. “Did you have anything else to suggest?”

Gan sighed. “No. Not at the moment.” He paused. “Do you really think that I am the best choice to watch after him here?”

Rhoam’s eyes softened, and Gan was mortified to realize that his friend had heard the twinge of worry in his voice instead of the long-suffering air he had been trying to project. “I trust no one more.”

Gan shook his head. “Knowing your daughter, they won’t stay in the castle for long anyway. She’ll be off on the trail of some new lead in her research before I even have the chance to say hello to the boy. I will keep my eyes open, and my wit sharp to sting any who don’t mind themselves around his youth, and I will do my best to treat him kindly myself despite my instincts. But Rhoam, I suspect that it will not have much time to matter, anyway.”

“It will matter, I think,” Rhoam said softly, “if you just try.”


End file.
